From Publishers Weekly
The latest Lt. Hastings mystery ( Hire a Hangman ) is a casually accurate procedural rich in plot, characters--including suspects--and San Francisco color. From Valentine's Day through the next six weeks, a series of powerful and wealthy men are shot to death on the street, the weapon the .22 favored by professional hitmen. The cops finally connect the victims as rather nasty members of the ultra-exclusive Rabelais Club (a combination of the real-life Bohemian and Pacific Union clubs). Old scandals (a hooker's death covered up, a notorious high-stakes poker circle), heavy political and media pressure and glimpses (for us) of the killer's mind-set lead up to Hastings's harrowing, climactic confrontation with the murderer. The range of characters is great, including an old sportsman/socialite, an obsequious professional waiter, a garish fat lady running a halfway house. And while semi-stolid Hastings is in charge, his co-head of Homicide, the appealing Lt. Friedman ("I spent a lot of time in school standing in the corner. . . . I figured it was time well spent") provides crucial balance. First-rate.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Lt. Frank Hastings, of San Francisco's Homicide Department, has a serial killer on his hands when it slowly emerges that four efficiently dispatched victims were all members of the posh Rabelais Club, as well as participants in a regular, weekly poker game there. Both the club's manager and its presiding officer, however, are eager to keep the club out of the papers, and, applying pressure to Hastings' superiors, they've warned him off. Unintimidated, Hastings and co-commander Friedman persist in investigating, eventually discovering a distant scandal--the death of a hooker at a club retreat weekend--along with cheating episodes at the gaming table, which resulted in a waiter's dismissal. Backed up by unit newcomer Janet Collier, Hastings unknowingly walks into the killer's lair; his lucky escape from death at the madman's hands will leave him so emotionally fragile that he turns for comfort to the idolizing Collier--with every indication that there are complications ahead for his relationship with his longtime love Ann. Solid, steady detective work from old pro Wilcox (17 Hastings titles to date), this time displaying a casual cynicism toward the mores of the power elite and a deepening vulnerability in Hastings's character. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
